Connecticut home prices continue to rise at a much slower rate than those across the rest of the nation, according to recent data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Home prices last year appreciated 3.6 percent, compared with a national average of 6.9.
Housing
Posted inHousing
HUD’s Carson commits to helping residents with crumbling foundations
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson Monday got a close-up look at the damage to one of thousands of Connecticut homes built with contaminated concrete. He said rescuing the homeowners from financial ruin will take a comprehensive, multi-government approach.
Posted inHousing
HUD’S Carson to visit Willington to view crumbling foundation
WASHINGTON — U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson  has accepted an invitation from Sen. Chris Murphy to come to Connecticut and take a first-hand look at the damage to homes that have crumbling foundations made of  tainted concrete.
Posted inHousing
Trump housing plan would make the poor pay more
WASHINGTON – Wendy Allen of New Haven has so little income she pays the minimum rent under a public housing assistance program, yet that modest fee would triple in size under a proposal championed by the Trump administration. Housing advocates say the plan to change federal housing policy could undermine the state’s efforts to eliminate homelessness and place low-income families and individuals under new economic stress.
Posted inHousing
CT House passes relief plan for crumbling foundations
The House of Representatives voted 97-42 on Saturday for a bill that would impose a $12 annual surcharge on homeowners’ insurance policies, contributing about $9.3 million annually to a relief fund for eastern Connecticut residents whose homes have crumbling foundations..Â
Posted inHousing
Connecticut House weakens, then passes affordable housing bill
The House of Representatives voted 76-72 Tuesday to approve and send to the Senate an affordable-housing bill sought by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to push two dozen Connecticut communities to end their prohibition on multi-family housing. The bill was stripped of financial penalties before passage.
Posted inHousing
A half century after Fair Housing Act: ‘We are segregated’
President Lyndon Johnson signed the federal Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968. Fifty years later, discriminatory lending and rental practices persist, as the Connecticut Fair Housing Center discovered sending fair-housing testers out to pose as renters or homebuyers over three years ending in 2015. Our Sunday conversation is with Erin Kemple, an attorney who lives in an integrated Hartford neighborhood and is executive director of the center.
Posted inHousing, Money, News, Politics
Trump budget calls for huge increases in CT-made subs, ‘copters
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s new budget would dramatically boost spending on the Virginia-class and Columbia-class submarines built by Electric Boat in Connecticut and sharply increase the Pentagon’s purchase of Sikorsky helicopters in the next federal fiscal year. While those increases may be approved by Congress, much of Trump’s budget was considered DOA.
Posted inCities & Towns, Energy & Environment, Housing, News
Sandy + 5; Irene + 6: Coastal resilience still elusive and expensive
More than six years after Irene, five years after Sandy, and tens of millions of dollars later, Connecticut’s shoreline communities have been slow to embrace resiliency and now look much as they did before the storms hit. But there are exceptions.
Posted inHousing, News
A win — and better housing — for voucher recipients
Last month, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must enforce a rule developed during the Obama administration to increase the rent caps for housing voucher recipients in nearly two dozen metro areas around the country, including Hartford. After the ruling, the Connecticut Mirror caught up with Erin Boggs of Open Communities Alliance and attorney Sasha Samberg-Champion who spoke about their lawsuit last December. Here is their take on the decision.
Posted inHousing, News
Fair housing advocates: HUD’s rule suspension hurting Connecticut families
Erin Boggs, executive director of Open Communities Alliance, and Sasha Samberg-Champion, a lawyer with a Washington, D.C., law firm are representing two clients in Connecticut in an attempt to force HUD to implement the Small Area Fair Market Rent regulation. In this Sunday conversation, Boggs and Samberg-Champion explain the rule and its potential effects on low-income families around the state.
Posted inHousing
Advocates say CT makes further progress reducing homelessness
An assessment by the Partnership for Strong Communities states the number of Connecticut residents experiencing homelessness during 2016 fell to 10,083, a five-year low and an 8 percent decrease from 2015.
Posted inHousing
Those with crumbling foundations finally may get some help
“The good news is there’s $20 million a year for remediation,” said Lyle Wray, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments. “Obviously, homeowners are impatient and want to get going.”
Posted inEconomic Development, Housing
Ortiz: Puerto Rico facing long, challenging recovery — bravely
Jason Ortiz, president of the Connecticut Puerto Rican Agenda, knows how badly Puerto Rico was damaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and how important the territory has been to the rest of the United States. He has strong feelings about what it will take to rebuild the island; and in this Sunday Conversation told us how the crisis has brought Puerto Ricans here and on the island together as a people.
Posted inHousing, Politics
As state loosens affordable housing rules, Milford does the same
Updated Monday at 3:54 p.m.
MILFORD — Twenty-two days after the General Assembly voted to loosen the state’s affordable housing standards despite the governor’s objections, at least one community is following suit.